Leadership Approach Paper Essay

Organizational carriage comes into play to aid management in enhancing their fellow feeling of human behavior within organizations to better communicate, allocate resources, delegate tasks, plan, organize, direct, and reserve work activities. The main purpose of understanding organizational behavior is to gain lead trenchantness, motivate workers, and inspire them to work toward a common objective. Although there atomic number 18 many leadinghip approaches, we leave alone focus on the situational leadinghip approach.We exit analyze the purpose, strengths and weaknesses of the situational attractership approach, and bear an example of how it can be utilise to real situations. Situational Leadership Approach As it name suggests, the situational leadership approach states that leaders should use different approaches as situations change. In short, leaders should be tensile, embrace change as it comes, and be capable of line uping to it. The situational leadership appr oach is a model that was developed by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey in 1972.The theory states that leaders should check out their leadership style to the maturity of followers and to the specific tasks on hand (Lerstrom, 2008). As great deal within organizations withdraw more experience and become more knowledgeable about their hire out, leaders pass on need to adjust new leadership styles to keep these people motivated. correspond to May (2013) the core concept of the situational leadership approach is that one size does not fit all.The best leaders are not only those who have a vision, but the most undefeated leaders are the ones who are able to change their leadership styles crosswise a broad range of varying maturity levels readily ease up within the average organization (May, 2013). Moreover, using the situational leadership approach suggests that leaders use a mix of other leadership approaches to be effective. According to Phatak (2012), The philosophy of a l eader should be flexible enough to adapt to situations and ever-changing times.We need a mixture of transactional and transformational leadership techniques to get the job done. The basic idea behind this theory is that one must adapt strategy with changing conditions. Strengths As mentioned earlier, situational leadership allows for more flexibility. As the man evolves, organizations have to make adjustments to survive. Tomasco (2013) states that with the situational leadership approach, leaders get the opportunity to adapt their leadership style to their followers needs.Consequently, as leaders effectively match their leadership style to situations and followers needs, work activities will run smoothly, interactions will be more successful, relationships will be built up, and followers will achieve optimum performance. Weaknesses Although the situational leadership approach appears to be the best naturally of action due to its flexibility, it has weaknesses that one cannot igno re. Phatak (2012) explains that incessantly changing strategies with time, a leader will find it difficult to implement new strategies on the go.A long term vision may elude him due to constant changes. Further, Wile (2013) identifies four weaknesses of the situational leadership approach which are confusion, leadership or management, outside factors, and perception. Indeed, followers may become confused as leaders change a newly implemented leadership strategy as a result of changing conditions. The situational leadership approach is often misconstrued with a management strategy to lead employees to achieve better outcomes.One cannot play down the impact external factors have on organizations and organizational behavior. Leaders should found their ability to understand the organizations external environment and to quantify followers behavior to implement a leadership approach that will work. Finally, people within organizations have different perceptions and react differently in similar situations. Hence, the situational leadership approach may not give finished predictions of followers behavior.Situational Leadership Approach in Real Life Alan Lerstrom from Luther College did a case sphere using the situational leadership approach in which he demonstrated how academic advisors can alter their leadership style base on students maturity as they advance higher in their studies. Lerstrom applied the Hersey and Blanchards model of situational leadership in the case study. The model suggests that effective leaders will adjust their leadership styles in accordance with changing situations and followers maturity.According to Lerstrom (2008), Jay, the student in the case study began viewing signs of maturity as he better understood the major he wanted to pursue and classes he needed to enroll in. Also, Jay became more confident about his abilities, understood the requirements associated with his major, and was more willing to communicate with the advisor. S ituational leadership provide theoretical and practical tools that help advisors in understanding changes in the ardor levels of their students, and it suggests patterns for relating to students (Lerstrom, 2008, p. 7). ConclusionSituational leadership is the approach that states that leaders must be flexible enough to adapt their leadership styles to changing situations, to specific tasks, and to organizational behavior. This study showed that although the situational leadership approach yields positive outcomes it has weaknesses. Thus, it is important to leverage the strengths of the approach to allay its weaknesses. For increased effectiveness, leaders will need to use organizational behavior research methods to better understand the situations at hand, their followers perceptions, and the organizations internal and external environments.This method will provide guidance in applying the appropriate leadership style. References Lerstrom, A. C. Advising Jay A Case Study Using a S ituational Leadership Approach. NACADA Journal Fall2008, Vol. 28 Issue 2, p21-27, 7p May, R. (2013). Basics of the Situational Leadership Model. Retrieved from http//www. businessdictionary. com/ article/724/basics-of-the-situational-leade rship-model/ Phatak, O. (June 20, 2012). Pros and Cons of Leadership Theories.